Black Wings

by Christina Henry

  “Yes.”

  “And what if I kill him?” I said through gritted teeth, and the magic zipped through my blood, alight with lust at the thought of death. “Will I free my mother? Will I free Patrick and any other soul trapped inside him?”

  “We don’t know,” Gabriel said quietly. “No one has ever killed a nephilim before.”

  “Why the hell not?” I shouted. “Obviously they’re monsters, and you and Beezle and probably every angel and demon in the world knows about them. So why hasn’t anyone gone nuclear on them and rid the world of their presence once and for all?”

  “The Grigori saw the nephilim and knew they were monsters,” Gabriel said. “But they were also the Grigori’s children. The children of nightmares, yes, but their children nonetheless. The Grigori had never had children before—no angel had. They could not bear the thought of killing their own offspring. So they bound the nephilim in the Valley of Sorrows for all eternity.”

  “Well, obviously their binding didn’t take. What the hell is Ramuell doing rampaging around Chicago? How did he break free?”

  “We are not entirely sure,” Gabriel said, frowning. “If he had simply broken free—an unlikely event, as all of the Grigori poured their power into the binding of the nephilim—then he would simply kill and destroy until he was captured again. I do not believe that Ramuell is ‘rampaging, ’ as you put it. These attacks appear to be controlled in some way. Lord Azazel has long suspected that someone, an enemy of Lucifer’s, is controlling Ramuell and using him for their own purpose.” “What purpose,” I said, and I could taste the magic on my tongue, hungry and eager, “would it serve to kill Katherine Black? How would she be a threat to Lucifer?”

  “We don’t know,” Gabriel said again. “But Lord Azazel believes that your mother’s connection to him was one reason she was targeted.”

  I felt a little hysterical. “So because my mother made the mistake of falling in love with my father, she was murdered and her soul is trapped forever inside this nephilim, which no one knows how to destroy?”

  Beezle nodded, and I had never seen his face as heart-broken as it was now. “As Katherine died, she performed a binding to protect you from Ramuell, using her own life force as a sacrifice. She suspected that Ramuell would come for you sooner or later. There is a circle of protection approximately one-quarter mile around this building. It does not protect you from all threats, but it will keep you safe from Ramuell. He cannot enter the circle. That is why he had to lure you out the other night, using Patrick to draw you to him.”

  I felt sick. My mother had sacrificed herself for me, kept me safe long after she was gone. But there wasn’t time to dwell on that now. There was something else bothering me; the first question that I had asked hadn’t been answered yet.

  “So tell me,” I said, and I was proud of the control in my voice, “just what are you, Gabriel? Why did my father think that you were the only one who could protect me from Ramuell?”

  Beezle looked at Gabriel, whose jaw was clenched. There were meteors exploding in Gabriel’s eyes.

  “It is your secret to tell,” Beezle said, and he bowed his head.

  “And it is not the time to tell it,” Gabriel said. He held up a hand to stop the protest on my lips. “It will not help you find Ramuell.”

  “But it will help me know if you are to be trusted,” I said.

  “You will have to trust that Lord Azazel knew what he was about when he sent me, and that the gargoyle would not allow me here if he thought you would come to harm.”

  I looked at Beezle, who shrugged and said, “I don’t have to like him, but what the devil says is true.”

  I didn’t trust my father, and I wasn’t sure that I entirely trusted Gabriel, but I knew that Beezle would never put me in harm’s way. If Gabriel was really a threat to me, Beezle would never have let him walk through the front door in the first place, geas or no.

  “You will tell me,” I said to Gabriel.

  He nodded. “When the time is right.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but I figured I had been given more than enough information to go on for now. At least I knew what I was up against. Lucifer’s child.

  Lucifer . . . the dream that I’d had of Evangeline. She had been pregnant with Lucifer’s child. Was that Ramuell inside her? Was the nephilim somehow sending me these visions, confusing me, trying to lure me to it by making me sympathize with its human mother?

  I wondered if I should tell Gabriel and Beezle about my dreams. But I held back. My magic was whispering in the back of my head, telling me to wait, that it was not yet time.

  I still needed to get into the Hall of Records. I needed some way to track Ramuell, and the only way I could think to do that was by finding his victims. That, or perhaps the witch that I was supposed to meet for the concealment charm could make me a tracking spell. The problem was you usually needed something personal for a tracking spell, and if I could get close enough to the monster to draw a hair or prick its finger, then I wouldn’t need the stupid spell in the first place.

  I realized suddenly that I was exhausted. The revelations of the last twenty-four hours and assorted beatings I’d taken were catching up with me. Gabriel seemed to sense that I’d had enough.

  “I will return to you tomorrow,” Gabriel said, and sketched a little bow before sweeping out without another word.

  “We’ll be waiting with bated breath,” Beezle muttered as the front door closed.

  “I need popcorn,” I announced.

  “Dinner of champions,” Beezle said, and hitched a ride on me into the kitchen.

  I took a package of popcorn out of the pantry and stuck it in the microwave, noticing as I did that the microwave clock said it was five forty-seven.

  “I can’t believe this day isn’t over yet,” I groaned, resting my elbows on the counter and dropping my head into my hands. Beezle scrambled down from my neck and onto the counter, his claws clicking. “When is it okay for me to go to bed and pretend the last two days never happened?”

  “Huh,” Beezle said, hunched in front of the microwave and focused with a predator’s intensity on the popcorn bag turning on the glass plate. The only food that Beezle liked better than chocolate was popcorn.

  “Beezle,” I said. “How come you never told me about my father?”

  The gargoyle dragged his eyes reluctantly away from the popcorn bag, which had started to pop. His face was a mixture of shame and defensiveness. “I wanted to,” he said.

  “But . . . ?” I asked, rotating my wrist in a circle to indicate that he should go on.

  “Your mother asked me not to tell you anything unless it became necessary.”

  The microwave beeped, indicating that the cycle was complete. Beezle scurried out of the way so that I could get the popcorn out of the microwave and put it in a bowl.

  “Define ‘necessary,’”I said as I took two handfuls of popcorn and put them on a napkin.

  He watched me take my serving of popcorn with greedy eyes. “You know . . . if Azazel showed up, I was to tell you everything. Other than that, Katherine left it to my judgment.”

  “And your judgment was to keep me completely in the dark, even after I made nightfire? I’m sure that most gargoyles would consider that a ‘necessary’ moment.”

  He looked abashed, but there was a defensive note in his voice as he said, “I was already under that devil’s geas when you manifested nightfire. I couldn’t tell you anything that would reveal him or your father.”

  I looked at Beezle carefully, trying to decide how angry I wanted to be about his withholding information from me. Beezle loved me, I knew he did, but he had loved my mother far more. If she had asked him to keep a secret until he turned to stone, he would have. I could be as upset and angry as I liked, but the fact that his loyalty was to Katherine and the promises he made her wouldn’t change. I sighed as I handed Beezle the rest of the bowl and he stuck his face so far into the popcorn that all I could see were the tops of
his ears.

  There would be no talking while Beezle was eating, so I decided to eat a little, too. I was pretty sure that I hadn’t eaten all day. After two kernels of corn I realized that my head was still too sore from Antares’s beating to chew anything. When I tried to crunch down, a bolt of pain ran from my back teeth up to my eyeballs. I dumped the rest of the popcorn back into the bowl. I could see Beezle’s whole face now. His jaws worked with grim determination on the remaining few handfuls at the bottom. I decided I wasn’t that hungry after all.

  I was definitely tired. Everything that I had learned in the last couple of days weighed on my heart. Patrick’s death and avenging my mother had been shunted aside by Antares, Gabriel, Lucifer, and my father, the fallen angel. And even with all of this happening, I still had my job to do. People don’t stop dying just because an Agent has personal issues, even if those personal issues are increasingly apocalyptic in nature.

  I could infer without any help from Beezle that Gabriel had been sent to me because Azazel was clearly having troubles of his own, and his enemies would want to use me to get to him.

  Case in point: my darling half brother. And Antares was probably going to take it very personally that he hadn’t been able to rip my heart from my chest on the first try. He just seemed like the type.

  Thoughts of being a pawn in a looming demon war made me want to swallow a jar of antacids, so I pushed that aside for the time being and tried to concentrate on what I needed to do immediately.

  “Beezle,” I said, tapping my finger on the counter. “Tomorrow I want you to go with me to Greenwitch’s.”

  Beezle licked the greasy butter film off the bottom of the bowl before he spoke. “I don’t do things or go places. I stay here and guard the domicile. That’s the duty of a gargoyle.”

  “It wasn’t the duty of a gargoyle the night Patrick was killed,” I reminded him. “Besides, I want you with me for a while.”

  “What for?” Beezle said crossly. You’d think he hadn’t come as close to dying as was possible for a gargoyle. He was just as much of a crab as usual.

  “First, because I might need more information as you deem it ‘necessary,’” I said with a meaningful look. “And second, I want to know that you are safe. So you stay with me.”

  “Right, because anyone looking at you would immediately think ‘safe,’ ” he grumbled, but he looked secretly pleased.

  I carefully touched all the tender places on my face, and realized that no amount of makeup could cover the damage done from demon saliva. I wanted a shower, though, to wash off the general ickiness of my encounter with Antares.

  “Besides,” Beezle said. “What do you want to see Greenwitch for? Like you haven’t had enough supernatural incidents this week?”

  “I need to get a concealment charm from her so I can break in to the Hall of Records,” I said.

  Beezle snorted. “Are you stupid or just acting like it? What makes you think the charm will get you into the Hall? Besides, the last thing you need right now is an encounter with a witch.”

  I shut the bathroom door firmly and turned on the shower, drowning out the sound of his voice. It sounded too much like the one in the back of my head, and I didn’t need the warning in stereo.

  8

  THE NEXT DAY I SLEPT AS LATE AS POSSIBLE AND PUTTERED around the house until it was time to head out to Greenwitch’s. I had a brief thought that maybe I should tell Gabriel where I was going—I did have his cell phone number—but then I decided that it was daylight and I was a big girl. I didn’t need my father’s errand boy leaning over my shoulder everywhere I went, no matter how cute he was. I had my late-evening soul pickup—one James Takahashi at the corner of Clark and Belmont—and I was going to get the charm a few hours beforehand. I hoped she’d had time to finish it up, because after my pickup I was planning on trying my break-in plan.

  Not that I had much of a plan. Mostly it involved hoping that I could find the necessary keys to the Hall once I got into the building. J.B. had a set that he kept with other important keys in his desk, and I just had to hope that he didn’t bring them home with him every night.

  A little after seven o’clock I stood at the door of Ms. Greenwitch’s garden apartment just off of Lincoln Square, a gentrified neighborhood a little north of where I lived. Greenwitch was her real name, and perhaps it wasn’t coincidence that she was also a bona fide witch. It was likely that the power in the blood had led to the naming of one of her ancestors as Greenwitch, and the line had been marked by both their name and their abilities ever since. My mother had occasionally used her services, and I had maintained the acquaintance because it is handy to know a witch. Occasionally Agents need charms of protection when our duties lead us into dangerous areas, like vampire nests or faerie rings. Vampires aren’t put off by the cloak of invisibility around an Agent, and if they’re hungry, they’ll eat anything.

  Beezle was perched on my shoulder trying to look unobtrusive. Gargoyles don’t make great accessories, and he’d flat-out refused to hide in my coat. We’d gotten quite a few strange looks from passersby on the street while we waited. Of course, it’s possible they weren’t staring at Beezle but at my mangled face. No adults said anything, though. People tend to avoid contact with strangers, and they didn’t want to look too closely at Beezle. One kid had pointed at us and said, “Look, Mommy, a rat!” before his mother averted her eyes and hurried away. Beezle was beyond thrilled about that comment.

  “What kind of a foolish child would mistake a gargoyle for a rat?” he said, puffing up with injured dignity.

  After several minutes of knocking and waiting, knocking and waiting, the door finally opened to reveal a very tall and athletic woman in her fifties, with her silver hair in a close-cropped pixie cut. Her eyes were a pale gray, so light that she almost looked blind. Her face was all strong lines and planes, and that face told you she was not to be trifled with. She was dressed in a slim-fitting black bodysuit.

  “Good evening, Ms. Greenwitch,” I said.

  “You interrupted my nightly yoga practice,” she said. Her voice was low and husky, like Kathleen Turner’s. “Come in.”

  She closed the door behind us as we stepped down the stairs into a short hallway. The white walls were covered in black-and-white photographs of trees. Ms. Greenwitch led us to another small room just a few steps down the hall. There was a closed oak wardrobe, a long oak table and little bunches of herbs drying on hooks in the ceiling. It was as clean as a hospital surgery room. She waved fingers covered in silver rings at my face. “I’ve got a healing charm for that.”

  I was tempted, since I knew Ms. Greenwitch’s charms were spot-on and it would not only take away my pain but make me a little less obvious in a crowd. “How much?”

  She named a price that was three times what I had in my pocket.

  “Just the concealment charm, please,” I said, and Beezle snorted.

  Ms. Greenwitch shrugged and went to the wardrobe. She took a key from a silver chain around her neck and unlocked it, carefully opening the door in such a way that I couldn’t see the contents inside. A moment later she closed and locked the door again and handed me a small paper bag, which I pocketed. I handed her the wad of bills from my pocket and she unrolled the cash, carefully counting aloud until she was certain I hadn’t cheated her. Not that I would dare. You don’t want a powerful witch pissed off at you. You might wake up one day and find your mattress had turned into a bed of scorpions, or that lightning was suddenly attracted to you every time you stepped outside.

  She nodded and I assumed that meant she was satisfied. “Thanks for the rush job,” I said, holding out my hand.

  She grasped my hand firmly for a shake, and suddenly she went rigid. Sweat broke out all over her face as her skin blanched white as paper. I tried to pull my hand away so I could help her to a chair—I thought she was about to faint, or maybe having a heart attack—but she gripped my fingers tighter, so tight that the pressure hurt. Beezle dug his claws into my shoulde
rs and hissed. His wings rose from his back like an angry cat’s fur.

  “Ms. Greenwitch? Are you all right?”

  Her eerie gray eyes were wide and staring and fixed on mine. When she spoke it was through clenched teeth, almost as if the words were pouring unwillingly from her mouth.

  “You are the last. He is coming for you. In smoke and flame, he is coming for you. There is only death in his wake and the heavens will pour fire, and all that you are will be destroyed.” The pupils of her eyes widened, until there was only a thin ring of gray around the black, and she stumbled back, releasing my hand.

  “Get away from here,” she spat. “And never return.”

  I had never really been friends with Ms. Greenwitch, but I was a semi-regular client and I’d always thought we’d at least had a decent business relationship.

  “What just happened?” I asked, confused beyond measure.

  “Get out!” she screamed, and her face was drawn in lines of desperation. Her eyes went to the small window near the ceiling. All that was visible through the glass were the bars that protected the basement-level apartment and the cement gangway that ran along the side of the building.

  I reached for her—to comfort or calm her, to try to figure out what the hell was going on—and she threw her hands forward, blasting me in the stomach with a punch of magic. The force sent me into the hallway, crashing into the wall. Beezle clung to my neck like a needle in a pin-cushion and I felt little rivulets of blood running from the places where his claws dug in. There was a strong scent of sage and thyme in the air as I struggled to my feet. It felt like a few new friends had been added to my very bruised ribs. I was getting really, really tired of getting beat up.

  “Right,” I said, flicking my fingers in salute at her. It hurt just to do that. “Leaving now.”

  “You stay away from here, Madeline Black,” she called after me, her voice shaking. “Keep your cursed blood out of my path.”

  Cursed blood? I mouthed to Beezle as we walked up the stairs. He shrugged. By the time I got to the front door, I was gasping for breath even though the flight of stairs wasn’t very long. I stumbled out onto the street and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, trying to remind my lungs that they liked oxygen and they should take all of it they could get.